Auditing and accounting giants such as PwC have held seminars advising businesses how to adjust.

Adam Mycyk, partner at the Kiev law offices of Chadbourne & Parke LLP, said that Ukrainian business using “Cyprus as a ‘cash collection’ centre for transactions with their related Ukrainian entities may indeed face an issue, whether because of a shortage of available cash and/or any capital controls that Cyprus puts into place.”

Tomas Fiala, CEO of Kiev-based investment bank Dragon Capital, said “the impact is not too big, but not negligible.”

He added: “A lot of investment, loans and trade flows are structured through Cyprus. It takes time to set up accounts at other banks in other jurisdictions. Several billion US dollars got frozen there but should be available within a couple weeks. Several hundred million will be lost at Laiki and the Bank of Cyprus.”

In talks with an IMF mission that arrived this week for discussions on a potential $15bn bailout, government officials have talked down the effects of the Cyprus situation.

Meanwhile, locals say the Cyprus contagion could increase the cost of borrowing on the Eurobond market for Ukraine’s cash-strapped government. This in turn could force it to accept the tough IMF bailout conditions.

Fiala said: “There is a bit of contagion, which together with large Eurobond supply from Ukraine caused prices to move down over the last two weeks. For instance, the long sovereign went down 4 points. If it should drop further, Ukraine would have a harder time accessing the market (it). And this could push Ukraine towards an IMF deal.”

In spring 2008, the Yuliya Tymoshenko government annulled the contract but it has been revived after a positive decision by the Stockholm Arbitration Court. Donetsk oligarch Rinat Akhmetov is searching for joint investors in the Vanco project.

Royal Dutch Shell won a tender in 2012 in a consortium with other international petroleum companies for the exploration of offshore deep-water reserves in the Black Sea’s Skifska field. They agreed to pay an upfront premium of $300 million upon signing the PSA and pledged to invest $200 million in the exploration phase.

The fourth policy, probably the most important, is supporting an expansion of gas production

Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell Ukraine Graham Tiley told the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine last year that it is entirely feasible for a three-fold increase in gas production from the current 20 billion cubic meters.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Ukraine was the biggest gas producer in the Soviet Union and much of this infra-structure of pipelines, underground storage and expertise remains. From the late 1970s the center of Soviet energy moved to Western Siberia and Central Asia.

One of the companies supporting Ukraine’s drive for energy independence is Cub Energy, a relatively small player in Ukraine’s energy sector registered in Toronto, a city it chose believing it offered better opportunities than London or Oslo.

Chairman Mikhail Afendikov, who was born in Donetsk, says Cub Energy brings together Albertan and Texan expertise and Western technology. Currently, it has nine gas wells in Transcarpathia and the Dnipro-Donets basin with up to 10 new wells planned this year in the 70,000 gross acres of underdeveloped land purchased this month lying adjacent to existing wells. The purchase of contagious land close to producing gas wells mitigates exploration risks enabling Cub Energy to draw upon existing infrastructure and in place Western technology.

Afendikov has high praise for Ukraine’s conditions for foreign investors saying Cub Energy has not experienced problems from local authorities while receiving encouragement from the central government. This is in contrast to earlier experience by Robert Bensh, who is a senior adviser to Cub Energy and Afendikov’s partner on day-to-day operations, with the Yushchenko administration. In 2008, after failing to resolve conflicts with oil and banking oligarch Igor Kolomoysky, who was then allied to Yushchenko, Bensh decided to close Cardinal Resources in Ukraine.

It is no coincidence that Ukraine’s energy independence is being spearheaded by Cub Energy, a city at the center of the large and active Ukrainian diaspora. It is also no coincidence that the majority of the Western companies that have won tenders in Ukraine’s energy sector are North Americans. The Yanukovych administration says that if Ukraine’s geopolitical importance grows in Washington’s eyes it will be given greater flexibility to pursue domestic policies and will be treated in the same manner as Russia.

Whatever the enigma, on-going steps toward Ukraine’s energy independence from Russia and the country again becoming a major European energy player are now on the cards for the first time since 1991. Cub Energy is one of the Western companies assisting in this strategic development.

Feb 23 Former Red Army Day
…Men’s Day In Soviet times it was the holiday of all those who had ever served in the military. While the Soviet Union was rather a military state, about 90% of men were at some point connected to the Red Army, so later it became a holiday for men. It is not a public holiday in Ukraine, but most women make some presents to their male relatives and friends and do their best to please their husbands and boyfriends.